Joseph McNamara

Joseph McNamara is a former police chief and is currently a research fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University in California. The following viewpoint is adapted from a speech he gave to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco on March 26, 1997. In it McNamara argues that the war on drugs cannot be won. Law enforcement can do little to deter drug-related crime, he says, and efforts to prevent drugs from entering the United States have almost no effect. The war on drugs is a failed policy, McNamara maintains, and claims to the contrary are merely antidrug propaganda.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. How much land would it take to grow the entire supply of drugs for the United States, according to the author...